Dear Religion, This week I safely dropped a man from space while you shot a child in the head for wanting to go to school. Yours, Science.

My mother saw me being attacked. She cried when I left engineering for this cause. She understood my fight, encouraged me. I remember all those who were with me in this struggle, including two colleagues who were killed. Whenever I free children from slavery and take them back to their mothers, the tears of happiness in their eyes are like blessings of God. When I see the faces of liberated children, I find their smile of freedom divine and it gives me divine strength. I never feel I’m liberating them, rather it feels like they’re giving me freedom.

If I was not fighting against child labor, I don’t know what else I could do. It was always in my heart, I could not live without that.

First of all, everyone must acknowledge and feel that child slavery still exists in the world, in its ugliest face and form.

I dream for a world which is free of child labour, a world in which every child goes to school. A world in which every child gets his rights.

More than 30 years ago, when I had embarked upon the fight against child labour, it was not even considered an issue worth any discussion. It was accepted as a way of life in India, much like it was in other countries. Today, no country or business or society can throw this issue away.

We as the governments, workers, employers and civil society must declare a war on child labour. This war cannot be won without strong, committed, coherent, and well-resourced worldwide movement. Equally needed is a genuine and active coordination between intergovernmental agencies at the highest level.

Elimination of child labour and access to education are like two sides of one coin. One cannot be achieved without the other.

We still have a soft approach on the perpetrators of crimes like worst forms of child labour.

At about an age when most children start full time schooling, hundreds of thousands of their contemporaries start a lifetime of drudgery in factories and fields, working 12-16 hours daily.

The fight against child slavery is the fight against traditional mindset, policy deficit, and lack of accountability and urgency for children across the globe.

There is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labour and illiteracy who have a cause and consequence relationship. We will have to break this vicious circle.

I am positive that I would see the end of child labour around the world in my lifetime, as the poorest of the poor have realised that education is a tool that can empower them.

I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.

Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems.